JobbieSandwich

All the full-timers away? Hope the people that have bought the houses being built at Tarriebank haven't put a payment down yet.

Really makes you ask the question who benefitted from these signings. In other news, I hear they've completed another sale at Tarriebank.

Before we get too downhearted, remember it has been a successful year for some.

I can lead you to water but I can't make you drink it. The last I'll say on the matter is that the club should be very careful bringing in board members/directors from a business background with no history of support for the club. Will come back in a couple of years in the hope that I've been proven wrong.

I would imagine the accommodation will be a payment in kind as the paperwork I linked to earlier clearly states that the property is leased to the club and it's not a tenancy with the players. Very worrying that the thought of Directors potentially syphoning funds out of the club would not be high on your list of concerns though.

Are you referring to the board member who got his Doctorate while at Her Majesty's pleasure?

I see you've not answered the question. Would you be happy if the club were paying an inflated price on a long term lease for a flat to a director?

It'd maybe be fine if it was transparent and it was actually business connections. As it is, it's actually a director and his brother, now our 'hospitality manager' using club money to secure themselves a guaranteed income and better collateral for bank loans. The details of that agreement between the club and the Booth brothers needs cleared up. What if it's a 10 year lease at £1k per month? Are you still OK with it?

You don't see any problems with this, not even the issue of conflict of interest?

Charge - Find and update company information - GOV.UK (company-information.service.gov.uk) There's the charge the Booth's have taken out on one of their properties where it is documented that they have an agreement directly with the club to lease said property. They draw up a long term lease with club to house players. That lease makes it more attractive for a bank to lend them money. Money that can go towards developing the properties at Tarriebank and Inverkeilor.

Well, well, well. Seems everyone is beginning to finally get what's happening.

Have you ever heard of an outfield player missing matches with a broken finger?

Heard a rumour that TOB has failed a drugs test and will not play for the rest of the season as the club deals with it internally.

You know that won't happen. Just look at the comments from other fans when we appointed McIntyre. Players end up hating him and he has that reputation in the game now. He has to now scour further afield like Ireland for players who don't know of him. This suits certain members of the board as those players need somewhere to live.

I'm not saying it was an active policy but who has seen the most benefit of signing these players on full-time deals, yet not one of them from a Tayside club who had already settled in the area and would not require accommodation? Dick has made a fortune through the schmoozing he and his associates were able to do in the boardroom suite. Something that had dried up as the prices for the sponsorship/boardroom passes have exploded in the last couple of years. So it's now the same people in there week in, week out. Makes you think.

Ali Adams would have saved that.

It all started going wrong with the quasi-hybrid system that was phased in from January 2022 when the likes of Michael Bakare and Sam Ford arrived. The only people who have benefitted are the Booth Brothers - getting top dollar from the club to rent out their properties to the players which has basically bankrolled the building project out by Tarriebank.

Mick Kennedy is now off the table. East Kilbride have promised him a 6-figure transfer kitty to spend over the next 3 windows.

Mick Kennedy will be announced on Monday morning.

The board have a clear preferred candidate. It is not Stewart Petrie.

Dick Campbell has been the greatest Arbroath manager in my lifetime and I'd guess only Bert Henderson would be the only rival as the club's GOAT. Other than a month long spell, things haven't looked good for the last 12-18 months. This is compounded by the fact it came on the back of our best season in 50+ years. I still think Dick had credit in the bank, so to speak. I have no doubt, if they want to, they'll turn up and achieve at another club. I think it might also be worth having a look behind the scenes. There's no doubt since Mike Caird took charge the club has been run a lot better but is there a bit of bloat now? Could do with a bit more transparency too with board members that have linked interests outside the club. Off the top of my head I can think of; Gary Moir - Moir Construction doing a lot of work in the ground. He's a fan so don't think it'll be dodgy. Ewen West - Strathmore Events 'organising' our hospitality. Jonny Booth - In fairness, he seems to be pretty competent. However, it does seem convenient that the club did a deal with Astute to produce various items during Covid and Jonny finds himself appointed as a director at Astute shortly after. I also notice that another Astute Director has since been appointed to the club. He also runs a property business with his brother, Malcolm. He seems to have weaseled his way in with the bricks at the club as 'Bar Manager'. I think by Bar Manager, that means he can help himself at the hospitality/boardroom bar and get pished. I think I even noticed a tweet last week where the club declared him a 'board member', although I haven't seen anything official. I don't know about anyone else but I think a rather large factor in our decline on the pitch has been this attempt at a 'hybrid' system. I can understand the thinking behind it to try and get a better quality player in but in practice, it's been a bit of a disaster. I can think of maybe 3 players that have come in and looked capable. Lewis Banks, Sean Adarkwa and Jermaine Hylton. Adarkwa was injury prone, Banks couldn't be convinced to stay more than 6 months and Hylton will probably be off in January. The surprising thing is we haven't tried this with local players from the likes of Dundee and Aberdeen. Given the lack of results from these full-time players, you need to ask who is benefitting? The team aren't, as we've got progressively worse the more we've introduced them. The part-time players aren't because even if a player is good enough, they move on too quickly to really fit in. Given that these players are not local, they have to be provided with housing in order to make the move. It would seem that the only person actually benefitting from this hybrid scheme is the landlords of these flats being provided to the players. I wonder who that is.